PC Magazine | Google lands futurist Ray Kurzweil

December 14, 2012

Google, like many top tech companies is always taking on new employees—but in landing Ray Kurzweil this week, the search giant hasn’t added your run-of-the-mill new hire.

A brilliant technologist who also happens to be one of the world’s most renowned futurists, Kurzweil announced on his blog Friday that he’ll be joining Google on Dec. 17 as a director of engineering. The 64-year-old author and inventor said he will focus on machine learning and language processing projects in his new role.

“I’ve been interested in technology, and machine learning in particular, for a long time,” Kurzweil wrote on his blog. “When I was 14, I designed software that wrote original music, and later went on to invent the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, among other inventions. I’ve always worked to create practical systems that will make a difference in people’s lives, which is what excites me as an inventor.” [...]